In today's Press-Register, Bill Finch celebrates his bountiful late summer harvest of peppers and eggplant and lists a number of tantalizing varieties.
August 2008 Archives
A while back I had been tinkering with the category archives and ended up messing up the page content. I've finally gone back and fixed that now so the category archives actually function as they should: a list of titles (with links) in each category.
Today is International Kitchen Garden Day. Admittedly, I had hoped to plan something, a meal perhaps if nothing more, but in the busy-ness of back-to-school I've dropped the ball. Instead I'll be looking out at my yard and appreciating the fact that my newly sprouted beans won't be inundated by the 8 - 15" of rain that we could have received if Tropical Storm Fay had continued our way without weakening.
In my garden, we're still getting jalapenos and bell peppers, a few green onions, and herbs.
I've been planning the fall garden and have ordered a few things that I needed. If you have leftover seed (as I do) you can still use it the next season, and in some cases even for a few years. The germination rate will go down, but you should still be able to get the plants you need by sowing more seeds. I was paging through a book my mother gave me, Rodale's The Frugal Gardener: How to Have More Garden for Less Money, and found a chart of expected life of seeds. (It's not my favorite garden book, but I do reference it fairly regularly.) There's the usual caution about keeping seeds in the proper conditions, i.e. cool and dry. I used to save seed as recommended, in an airtight jar in the refrigerator with a silica packet to absorb moisture, but the last few years I've just been keeping them in a storage container in the house and I don't notice a difference in performance.
What's your appreciation of your kitchen garden today?
If you love okra, you'll love the big feature on okra in the Press-Register's Friday Garden & Home section. (Note: the online article does not include growing tips.) Read and make plans for next year's crop.
While I consider the issues of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) rather out of the scope of this blog, here's a succinct article from Slate which lays out the stakes.
WHAT: Local Food Production Initiative public meeting
WHEN: Monday, August 18 at 6:30pm
WHERE: the Nix Center, 1 Bayou Drive in Fairhope
TOPIC: City Council Member Cecil Christenberry, owner of the Old Tyme Feed & Garden Supply store, will discuss “Planning for Your Fall Garden”.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
See this archived post for more information on the Local Food Production Initiative.
Eat Local Challenge has announced its fourth annual event, the October 2008 Eat Local Challenge. If you're wondering what that entails, here's the summary from their site:
The traditional Eat Local Challenge is a basic concept: commit to eating only locally grown foods for a period of thirty days. Declare "exceptions" that you will not be eating locally, and try as hard as you can to have everything else come from your local foodshed. "Local" is traditionally a 150-mile distance from your home, but can really be defined as any area near you. Some locavores choose their county, state, or region.
Don't tell my husband, but I am seriously considering signing up.
I'm happy to see that the folks up north have extended their Eating Alabama project for two more months, for a total of six. They were originally planning on April through July, but Andrew Grace writes: "We haven't eaten enough food from our great state. We haven't visited enough farms. We haven't talked to enough people concerned about local food, local flavors, and local economies." And of course, "it's unbelievably easy to eat only food from Alabama this time of year." Easy to say if you live in the northern part of the state!
They've posted a lot of good new content and interviews with more producers, so if you haven't stopped by already be sure to check it out.
Via the Organic Consumers Association, a link to Grist's Checkout Line blog, addressing a question on sustainable fish choices. Lots of good links and guidelines, though as always there is no definitive answer to this very tricky question.
From the Organic Consumers Association, a link to a short piece on Grist, Solving the apartment dweller's dilemma: how to have a garden when you're short on space. The answer is container gardening, which is what I always recommend to people just starting out, even people who have yards. You can have as few or as many containers as you want, you can position them in a convenient spot, and the effort involved is fairly minimal, the scale less intimidating than plowing under a section of your lawn. Herbs are great to start with since the payoff is big - so much flavor for so little effort - and the plants, being almost weedy, are pretty forgiving. Many vegetables have dwarf or small varieties suitable for growing in containers (just get large ones), and standard varieties of some plants will work as well. Lettuce and salad greens, tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans, and peas, among others, can all grow in containers.
Via the Organic Consumers Association, a link to this article on Grist: Dispatches from the Fields: Whatever happened to organic?.
This thoughtful piece contains some really illuminating comments on why we need to continue to push for organic food, and has a lot of useful links within the article as well. The authors, both working on small farms, write: "a focus on buying locally avoids a critique of industrial agriculture from all perspectives except that of transportation." That may be going a bit far, since I think - or hope - that for most people there are also issues of fair wages and compensation, supporting the local economy, food that is just plain fresher and better, and at least a chance that small farmers will be more likely to embrace organic agriculture (and these reasons are all cited in the article). My investment in local food is closely tied to the idea of sustainability. But it's true that to focus solely on food miles pushes these other, equally important ideas to the rear.
Eat Local Challenge brings us a neat little story about a meal made completely within one block.
While the menu sounds like a perfect seasonal feast, the article shines for its wealth of information that can help others get started on their own edible backyard.
Online resources accompanied the article including;
Garden Calendars for each region of the West
Enrich your soil, step by step
Organic pest controls
Growing tips for all our crops
Harvesting methods
More recipes
Plus ten downloadable how-to-guides: chickens, cheese, olive oil, bees, wine, beer,salt, and more
The staff kept a blog throughout the year’s efforts, creating an enjoyable and educational resource that can help shorten the learning curve for anyone inspired to “grow their own.”
Another Garden Q & A at Kitchen Gardeners International, this time on Weeding Techniques.
Notice the first sentence of the response. The most effective way to weed is to lay enough mulch down that weeds simply can't grow in the first place. Compost, leaves, pine straw, newspaper, the choice is yours.
Again at KGI, Barbara Damrosch on Keeping basil at its best.
At Kitchen Gardeners International, reprinted from Barbara Damrosch's column, A keen eye catches the hornworm.
Your tomatoes are probably done for this year, so file for next summer. I handpick caterpillars into a bowl of soapy water. Or, like one attendee at Bill Finch's gardening seminar, you can take a pair of scissors with you and cut them in half.
Kitchen Gardeners International has a nice Garden Q & A on Making Compost Tea (and also manure tea). Compost tea is essentially a liquid fertilizer, a way to give a quick shot of nutrients to your plants.
While they mention using a burlap bag, I use a large mesh onion bag or something similar.
I attended this morning's seminar on Fall Vegetable Gardening by Bill Finch, which included a look at his own vegetable garden.
He emphasized that winter is really a wonderful time to garden here, though you don't hear much about it. I heartily agree. Even though I've only lived here two years, I learned pretty quickly that cool-season gardening is my favorite time of year, and the grueling height of summer my bête noire - pretty much the opposite of the midwestern climate I was used to.
To sum up, there were pretty much two principles Bill emphasized for winter gardening.
- Timing - that's why you want to start NOW.
- Enrich your soil with organic matter (obviously this applies no matter what the season).
For timing, there's a very handy and attractive chart that's available online at the Press-Register: The Plain Garden Planting Cycle (PDF). It's specifically designed for Mobile and the immediate area. The chart contains a lot of information that was reviewed during the seminar.
There are things you can start from seed now in pots, like broccoli and greens, and other plants you'll want to start later, like chard and onions. Others can be sown directly in the ground in September and October, even into December (for snap peas).
Some people asked about varieties, and for some plants - garlic, for example - it is important to get ones that are suited to our climate. But otherwise you can use most any reliable seed catalog, since as Mr. Finch pointed out the plants we're growing here in the winter are the ones the rest of the country grows during warmer seasons.
A couple of specific sources that were mentioned:
- Filaree Farm for garlic; look for the turban varieties.
- Southern Exposure Seed Exchange for seeds.
Be sure to order your seeds promptly, particularly this year, since the victory garden craze and anxiety over food costs have caused seed companies to sell out much more quickly. Garlic in particular is a fast mover, and a glance at Filaree Farm shows that several varieties are already sold out for this fall.
Enriching your soil through the addition of organic matter was addressed in a February Garden column (sorry, the links have expired). Mr. Finch's preferred method is to pile leaves on the bed several feet deep, and let them slowly decompose into rich topsoil. When you need to plant you can brush the top layers aside. As evidenced by the lush, healthy garden we toured, this method works quite well.
Below is a photo of a bed covered with composting leaves so you can get an idea of the volume. These are pretty well composted at this point.
The audience of around 50 (I believe the Botanical Garden sold almost all its tickets for the event) had plenty of questions, and I gleaned some tidbits for you about common questions regarding the summer garden.
You can still plant pole beans and bush beans NOW for another crop before winter. Get out there and get planting!
For summer gardening, choice of variety - or at least, knowing what NOT to grow - is more important. For example:
- Dwarf okra doesn't do well here because it doesn't have a big enough root system to hold up to the nematodes. Stick with older, full-sized varieties.
- If you're a frustrated tomato grower, you may want to try cherry tomatoes instead. Leaf-footed bugs don't bother them as badly (as they certainly did my tomato crop).
- If you're a frustrated squash grower, try solid-necked varieties like Tromboncino and Seminole pumpkin. Pick them small and treat them like the standard summer squashes. Yellow squash and zucchini, which are hollow-necked varieties, are plagued by the squash vine borer; solid-necked ones aren't as susceptible.
Frustrated cilantro growers may want to try the herb papalo, which most of us had a taste of. It's a Mexican herb that's more suited to our climate, and can be used as a substitute for cilantro. It doesn't taste like cilantro, but it has a warm, spicy flavor which I recalled pleasantly the rest of the day. It has soft, grey-green leaves and an attractive upright growth habit. Looking online, I've found photos of two somewhat different plants; one that looks like the one I've photographed below, and another with more pointed leaves and sparser growth. I don't know if both are truly papalo.
WHAT: NatureBLAST! Family Fun Day at Mobile Botanical Gardens
WHEN: Saturday, August 23 from 9am - 12pm
WHERE: Mobile Botanical Gardens
COST: $10 per family in advance; $15 per family at the gate. Reservations requested.
CONTACT: Mobile Botanical Gardens, P. O. Box 8382, Mobile, AL 36689, (251) 342-0555
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
You can download an event flier at the Botanical Gardens web site.
Parents, children, grandparents...everyone is welcome for an exciting morning of exploration and discovery. All activities are designed especially to instill a love of outdoor adventures and an appreciation of nature. (Adults are welcome, even if not accompanied by children.)
There will be nature walks, crafts, and activities including Grocery Store Botany, bee keeping demonstrations, and a five senses experience in the Herb Garden.
At least two of our caterpillars did not stray far when it came time to pupate. I found them in a nearby clump of ornamental grass. One (above) was green flecked with brown. You can see the strand of silk attaching the chrysalis to the leaf.
The other (below) was green accented with yellow. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a crisp photo of this one but I wanted to include a blurry one so you could get a sense of the color. The colors were luminous, making them look like living jewels.
I'm sorry to say that I went out later that afternoon and could no longer locate either insect. It's possible rain could have knocked the cases off, but I'm afraid a hungry bird might have plucked these tasty morsels, well-camouflaged though they were.
Kitchen Gardens International made The Earth Knows My Name by Patricia Klindienst one of its books of the month. In it she writes about "urban, suburban, and rural gardens created by people rarely presented in American gardening books: Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants from across Asia and Europe, and ethnic peoples who were here long before our national boundaries were drawn."
On a related note, I happen to be reading Charles C. Mann's 1491, an alternative history of the Americas before Columbus, and am on the section about Indian agriculture. Though familiar from school textbooks, it's still remarkable to be reminded just how many plants Indians domesticated. Corn, the most important grain crop in the world by weight; tomatoes, peppers, squashes, beans, and potatoes. Cotton too, though it's not a food crop.
I'd like to start including more information about books, and while I was originally only going to include ones that I've read, given my slow pace that's not very practical. So I'll provide reviews when I can, other information when I can't.
Via Culinate, over at Grist's new Checkout Line blog, Lou Bendrick answers a question about how to talk to growers, and commenters debate the value of organic certification, among other things.
I think it's important to talk to growers about their methods, both because it gives them opportunity to talk about something they are proud of and for you to learn something about how your food is grown, and also because it lets them know there is an interest in and market for organics. However, I also feel reluctant to query people who don't openly advertise that they're "pesticide-free" or organic. My assumption is that if they're not volunteering that information they're using conventional methods, and let the buyer beware.
Although I do think it's important to have standards, I don't have a problem with growers who are not certified organic. Knowing a bit about the certification process, and having heard enough farmers complain about it, I can understand why it's not something everyone would want to pursue. My concern is more about the growing method, not the certification.
Whether you're a farmer or a consumer, what are your perspectives about asking for information? Do you have any experiences, positive or negative?
Culinate ran a nice little interview with Lynn Rossetto Kasper, host of public radio's The Splendid Table. I'd love to see her new book, The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper.
You can listen to the show online, via podcast, or on Mississippi Public Radio Sundays at 11am.
Some more green grilling tips from Culinate.
Today is my daughter's first day of preschool. I took the opportunity (in between rain showers) to spend 45 minutes weeding my long-neglected garden. I was thrilled to find four swallowtail butterfly caterpillars on the remnants of my bronze fennel, which I planted specifically as a host plant (I am not a fennel eater). I don't know what variety of swallowtail they are, though an internet search suggests they may be black swallowtails. I hope they pupate soon, because there's not much left to eat on my ragged plants.
Below is a shot where you can easily see three of the four.
You can see more shots in the extended entry, linked below.
Continue reading Wildlife Gardening Pays Off.
Via Culinate, a link to Swimming in Greenpeace's Seafood Report in the Washington Post food blog A Mighty Appetite, where Kim O'Donnel reviews the Greenpeace report Carting Away the Oceans: How Grocery Stores Are Emptying the Seas.
The report is aimed at evaluating commercial buying practices and takes a look at U.S. grocery stores. None fares well, with top-ranked Whole Foods getting only a 4 out of 10 score. The report does NOT make recommendations for consumers, nor does it endorse any of the popular watch list programs. It does provide a red list of 22 species most vulnerable to overfishing and extinction. Included are many commonly seen on menus and in fish markets here, including grouper, red snapper, and tropical shrimp.
Over at Culinate, Harriet Fasenfest writes:
Ask yourself why you garden. Urban farming isn’t for the merely romantic.
She reminds us of the hard work and casual ridicule that comes our way.
Sadly, our market season (in Mobile) is over for the summer, but Culinate provides these good tips to keep in mind when you're shopping there again in the fall:
I've been paging through my backlog of news articles, selecting the best ones and getting ready to share them with you. If you're an avid news reader you may have seen some of these already, but most of the information I like to post is evergreen (i.e. always relevant and not time-sensitive). So prepare for a flurry of links!
In today's Press-Register, Bill Finch salutes the anole, the small, entertaining lizards ubiquitous in our gardens, known to some as chameleons or false chameleons. Like just about any reptile you may see in your garden, you should be happy to have them, since they consume insects.
I can remember visiting a great aunt and uncle who lived in central Florida 30 years ago, and spending lots of time - sometimes succeeding - trying to catch them.
Last year my daughter found a young one in her room. "Mommy!" she said, "there's a lizard in my room!" I thought it was yet another imaginative game. Much to my surprise there was a lizard, a young anole. We managed to capture it in a bowl and carry it outside to some leaves, where we let it go and watched while it licked dewdrops with its little tongue.
